Black History Hero Emmett Louis Till (July 25, 1941 – August 28, 1955) was an African-American boy who was murdered in Mississippi at the age of 14 after reportedly flirting with a white woman. Till was from the South-side of Chicago, the only child of Louis and Mamie Till. Till never knew his father, a private of the U.S. Army during World War II, and was reportedly executed while serving in Italy. In August of 1955, Till was visiting his relatives in Money, Mississippi, when he allegedly spoke to (whistled at/touched the hand) of 21-year-old Carolyn Bryant. A married white woman, of a small grocery store that her and her husband owned. And four days later on August 28, Bryants husband Roy and his half-brother J. W. Milam arrived at Emmett Tills great-uncles house around 2:30am, where they took Till, transported him to a barn, beat him and gouged out one of his eyes, before shooting him through the head and disposing of his body in the Tallahatchie River, with a 70-pound cotton gin fan tied around his neck with barbed wire. His body was discovered and retrieved from the river three days later. His body was so mutilated and unrecognizable, the only way they could identify him was from fathers ring that had his initials L.T. engraved on it. In which his mother gave him the day before he left to visit with his relatives to Mississippi. Till was returned to Chicago and his mother, and she insisted on a public funeral service with an open casket, with Tills body on display for five days. Tens of thousands attended his funeral or viewed his casket and images of his mutilated body, in black-oriented magazines and newspapers. Rallying popular black support and white sympathy across the U.S. Tills mother said that, despite the enormous pain it caused her to see her sons dead body on display, she opted for an open-casket funeral in an effort to let the world see what has happened, because there is no way I could describe this. And I needed somebody to help me tell what it was like. In the weeks that passed between Tills burial and the murder and kidnapping trial of Roy Bryant and J.W. Milam, and by the time the trial began—on September 19, 1955—Emmett Tills murder had become a source of outrage and indignation throughout the country. Because blacks and women were barred from serving jury duty, Bryant and Milam were tried before an all-white, all-male jury. Despite the overwhelming evidence of the defendants guilt and widespread pleas for justice from outside Mississippi, on September 23, the panel of white male jurors acquitted Bryant and Milam of all charges. Their deliberations lasted a mere 67 minutes. Only a few months later, in January 1956, Bryant and Milam admitted to committing the crime. Protected by double jeopardy laws, they told the whole story of how they kidnapped and killed Emmett Till to Look magazine for $4,000. Look at how this had an Impact on the Civil Rights Movement. Only one year after the Supreme Courts landmark decision in Brown v. Board of Education mandated the end of racial segregation in public schools, Emmett Tills death provided an important catalyst for the American Civil Rights Movement. One hundred days after Tills murder, Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat on an Alabama city bus, sparking the yearlong Montgomery Bus Boycott. Nine years later, Congress passed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, outlawing many forms of racial discrimination and segregation. In 1965, the Voting Rights Act, outlawing discriminatory voting practices, was passed. Though she never stopped feeling the pain of her sons death, Mamie Till (who died of heart failure in 2003) also recognized that what happened to her son helped open Americans eyes to the racial hatred plaguing the country, and in doing so helped spark a massive protest movement for racial equality and justice. In an interview with Devery S. Anderson in December of 1996, Mamie Till stated... People really didnt know that things this horrible could take place, And the fact that it happened to a child, that make all the difference in the world.
Posted on: Wed, 12 Feb 2014 01:47:19 +0000
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